The king of Zing
Ed Fella: By Alice Twemlow

“I remember the older guys saying ‘oh kid you don’t want to use that style, it’s horrible’. I suppose it would be the same thing now if a student came to me saying he’d found this old stuff by someone called David Carson or Ed Fella. I would say ‘What are you doing?’

A world beyond
Persian illustration towards the modern age: By Nima Falatoori

The leading illustrators of modern day Iran are making a conscious effort to look back to their cultural and artistic past, resisting the temptation to westernise their aesthetic in preference to documenting their heritage and personal cultural perspective.

Ruptured and remade
Stewart Mackinnon: By Rick Poynor

“The people who always interested me, and still do, are the great classical painters who could draw, and people like George Grosz and the kind of very aggressive, explicit graphics. I also loved Eric Gill and that kind of classical beautiful drawing.

Hard done-by martyrs
What’s wrong with a piece of straight illustration?: By Adrian Shaughnessy

‘With photography you know the answer you want before you’ve even taken the photograph. With an illustration you have the opportunity of combining your talent with someone else’s, and to come up with a very surprising picture.’

When words fail
The greening of illustration: By Jody Boehnert

Illustration can be used as an effective green washing tool by companies more eager to appear to be working towards a green agenda than actually doing anything about it.

Mario Hugo – A modern romantic
By Mark Webster

Mario Hugo describes himself as having had ‘a tempestuous affair with illustration’ since studying fine art, sociology, design and art direction. His work however, is far from tempestuous. It reveals a thoughtful artist, eschewing the hard digital lines of contemporary expression in favour of a softer, more humanistic approach.

Invitation to play
Imaginative energy: By Wendy Coates-Smith

‘For me, the book is architecture; it is a given space into which I compose the painted written-on, cut-though and empty pages.’

Broken English
Dust blood and oil: By John O’Reilly

Peter Kennard’s montages were described by John Berger as ‘pure and dirty’. Today they are bought by the likes of the Tate and revered by a new generation of street artists.